THERE IS a place, between pew and public square, which has yet to be heard or even acknowledged in the wake of the Dublin diocesan report.It is not reached by either the moral/legalism of the media-driven public conversation or the pious mantras in which the Irish Catholic Church addresses its faithful.
Because our public discourse has an agnostic rulebook, there are limits to its probing. All Christians are citizens but not all citizens Christians, so the discussion avoids showing an interest in matters that might be deemed in-house.
The Murphy report has, of course, many implications of a civic, moral and socio-political complexion, and the debate has been pretty exhaustive about these. But there are deeper questions pertaining to Christianity, which by definition cannot be dealt with in a public discussion in which faith has been separated from knowledge of reality.
Catholics can go to church seeking answers, but the most they can hope for is a replication of the responses offered to the civic realm. Some priests may address their congregations, but of necessity their contributions will be tailored to take account of external realities, while adhering to a form of cultural expression that might be deemed part of the larger problem. The bishops are preoccupied with institutional survival.
This crisis did not begin, or become visible, with the publication of the Murphy report, which outlines symptoms rather than root problems. The fundamental crisis is not institutional, but lies at the heart of Irish Christianity. It will not be ended by resignations or public apologies. It has provoked a number of other crises at the social and civic levels, which may well be ameliorated by such gestures, but these are secondary.
Sociological analyses are beside the point. By way of defining the true crisis, I have to ask a question implicitly considered beyond the remit of secular journalism: where does Irish Catholicism stand with Christ?
There is a superficial way of asking this that will ground itself immediately in popular piety, provoking a nodding or shaking of heads in acknowledgement of the yawning gap between the principles of Christianity and how certain priests and bishops behaved. But that is not what I have in mind. In fact, this pious understanding of Christianity may be at the root of the evils that have been exposed.
What is assaulted in the Christian sensibility by child abuse and its cover-up is not faith in the integrity of bishops, but an instilled sense of the world revealed by Christ, from the very moments we opened our eyes, in which each of us is loved beyond imagining. The sense of betrayal therefore extends far beyond any sense of the breaching of laws, civil conventions or even moral principles. It is a metaphysical affront.
In their anger, people talk of walking away from the Catholic Church, as though the issue were membership of a club or adherence to an ideology, like a population of Marxists discovering the crimes of its communist rulers. But Christ is not the bearded founder of an interesting philosophical movement, someone we “remember” as having briefly come among us to lay down principles for good living. For Christians, Christ is the incarnation of the mystery that defines humanity.
Somehow, something of this Christ was communicated to us, but our sense of Him remained separate from our relationships with the Catholic Church. In the public expression of faith, we marched under a particular banner, signed up to a moral programme and retained a sentimental idea of a handsome and charismatic man who turned water into wine. But we appear not to have absorbed into our culture any real understanding of what Christ came to tell us. How could we have, if so many of those who told us about Him did not themselves appear to know that He is here every moment? We speak the name of this man-god Christ but no one who eavesdropped on our conversations from outside would gather that we were talking about the redeemer of human fragility and the incarnation of human destiny.
What is missing is not intensity of faith, but awareness of human reality. Christ is not the icon of a popular piety based on a necessary moralism or a salutary tradition. He is a living man, who is here now, and whose presence defines everything. Either we know this or we don’t. It is not a matter of faith, but of knowledge.
Our fundamental – ie religious – relationships are not with priests, bishops, or even the pope, but with a person who happens to be God. Either this is true or it’s not. If it is not, then it is time to discuss the funeral arrangements of the culture we have taken for granted. If we believe it to be true, we need to begin speaking in public about vital things in a way that will allow us to access the full extent of what we imagine we believe.
The shocking possibility arises: Ireland has been a Catholic country, but not really Christian. If so, it should not surprise us that men raised to be priests in such a culture would enjoy no special immunity to evil.
But this is the result, not the cause of our problem.
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